Voice over data is still data.
There are still devices that don't support it, so the magic box should support voice. I'm really annoyed that all of the fill-in coverage around me is just LTE, leaving plenty of small spots where CDMA is weak.
Like it or not, LTE is not going to match CDMA anytime soon for voice performance. It still doesn't on Verizon, it won't on Sprint. Maybe in a few years with a lot of density improvement, yes, but right now, no.

Now that the IBEZ issues have cleared up, what form will the retrofit take? Will they just add the 800MHz radio with its own antenna or will it entail removal and replacement of all of the existing 1900MHz-only antenna hardware and then adding the 800 radio?
We do have a number of higher capacity sites with twin PCS setups, so those seem to have a straightforward answer.
I live in Michigan, where most of the state is PC only. This even includes a couple of brand new sites that I have inspected. It seems extremely short sighted to install all of these goofy PCS antennas, only to replace them shortly.
I suppose it is possible that they will install the dual band antenna with its own two radios at every site, leaving the existing PCS antenna and its radio installed and functioning. This would be good from the standpoint of redundancy and signal range due to radio limitations. Unfortunately, it would also make too much sense for a major cellular carrier to consider it. There is also the issue of the situations in which the PCS hardware, due to its compactness, is simply lashed directly to the tower mast. This would need to be replaced by dual band setups, if they even fit at all.
Just a few thoughts.

I will generally agree with this, though in my area, T-Mobile has a lot more odd dead zones.
I rack up sometimes several thousand minutes on air per month. I talk to someone for about an hour and a half a day on her way to and from work, and it drops on her end at least three times if she goes one way, and at least four another way. This is right through my area, which is a very well-off place where people have nice phones, so phone companies make a lot of money. We can start with a mile long mostly-dead zone in the middle of Oxford, continuing into the Orion Township border. Next are two spots in Bloomfield Hills, and lastly one in Southfield. This is ignoring countless spots with brief fading.
I can make that same drive with zero issues. This is obviously not an exhaustive comparison, as not all networks have hardware in the same places, but it's a recurring theme around here when comparing T-Mobile and Sprint. T-Mobile also has a lot more data outages than Sprint does.

They are on par only in their own eyes. AT&T is not nearly on par with Verizon coverage wise, especially geographically, and even further behind in consistency of coverage (swiss cheese). T-Mobile won't be on par with either one in the near future. They both have more than enough money to get ahead without breaking a sweat if T-Mobile starts to get anywhere close.

My 6P took a crap. I literally took it and my Thinkpad into a friend's restaurant's walk-in freezer and sit there for half an hour in a winter jacket in (-10 F temperature) to keep it operating in order to get my data off.
No repair or warranty replacement in sight for my $450 paperweight that broke after 7 months, despite it being in perfect exterior condition.
Huawei and Google are being sued now over this (common) malfunction.

I am guessing that you're talking about the site I was talking about earlier, the tall guyed tower north of the river, kind of between Second and the river.
Sending message with contact details. I have a couple of people at my limited disposal, both Sprint and Ericsson. They don't work for me, but have been happy to help me so far. Call or text next time. Worst case, maybe meet up for a wine or something. Wife, girlfriend, whatever invited. It's interesting to meet people from the internets to work on real world problems sometimes.

It has a Sprint site on it.
A good friend of mine owns a restaurant there at forth and main and I noticed I get extremely strong (better than -90) LTE on 2500 when I am in his office. The office is in the back of the building and has a large window facing right toward that tower. I have actually personally examined this site and can guarantee with zero doubt that it is a Sprint site, in fact, I was one (the one or one of the ones) who submitted it here as being a conversion in progress a couple of years ago. Site ID on the electric meter is SPRINT PCS DE60XC067. If you're a sponsor, you should be able to look that up on the map. I'm on my phone now, so I can't do it easily. I guess it's possible that it's retired, but the full S4GRU map won't load without crashing my browser here.

Tienken and Rochester is in the back corner of the shopping center, right where Orion Ct. comes into the parking lot from Orion Rd. It's a really busy looking self-supporting tower, with so much stuff on it that there is cable run on the entire exterior of the structure, in addition to the cabling in the inside. There's also a site along the south side of the Clinton River Trail that is a narrow but very tall guyed mast tower, which also mounts lots of microwave hardware. You might actually get a better signal from this site in a lot of places that are much closer to the tower in the shopping center parking lot.
I live off of Baldwin Rd. just north of the donut at Indianwood. My normal site is next to the Odyssey Industries factory on Indianwood, but I have been picking up the site on Oxford Rd. next to the storage complex and sort of behind the Meijer store on M24. I have been picking up 800MHz CDMA from that site frequently over the last few months, though am grabbing 1x 1900 from there at curiously strong signal levels (between -96 and -91). I also get the site on Seymour Lake every now and then. Despite being less than a mile from the site on Indianwood, my signal levels from that site are pretty bad lately, almost never exceeding -95 in my house.

Interesting. Verizon speeds suck fluorescently in a couple of areas near me that have those units installed, yet Tmobile's have improved significantly.
Got any pictures or info about Tmobile's small cell setup?

I was in the Rochester area for quite a while yesterday (16th). What side of town was this? What time did it happen? Is this an area you frequently visit?
I am all over the place as part of my work, so I frequently notice a lot of network "evolution" pretty quickly.

I am seeing B26 in Birmingham and Novi.
I am also seeing a bizarre level of temporary 30 min to 1 hour long "holes" in the network, like from a single site being down in a fairly sparse area. I think this is from new equipment being installed. After the site is back online, performance tends to be poor, which I believe is from new hardware being installed without being adjusted to finality. Near my girlfriens's house in Howell (M59 & Michigan Ave.) last night around 9 PM, I was unable to connect to anything but Verizon (data free) roam for about 25 minutes. I cycled airplane mode, rebooted the phone, etc., to no effect. I've had exactly this with increasing frequency in a few places including near home, starting in the last 2-3 months.
Near home (Orion Township) I now have CDMA 800 from Oxford and Clarkston sites, and the site along Brown Rd between Baldwin and Joslyn (near 75) on the Auburn Hills border, has been visibly updated. My feeling is about 25% geographical coverage of CDMA 800 in my area.

iPhone 3G and 3G S are UMTS/GSM devices. They aren't compatible with Sprint in any way. Remember that the iPhone 4 has a CDMA and a GSM/UMTS variant. All iPhone 4 S models sold in the US are identical in all ways other than color.